Source: The New York Times
On October 22, 2000, The New York Times reported that "at New Salem Missionary
Baptist, the little country church in Tennessee where Senator Albert Gore's private
funeral was held, folks were not at all sure that a woman should be allowed to speak
from the pulpit, even if she was an Episcopal bishop, in from Washington, D.C. And
some mourners on the other side of the cultural and religious divide that day did not
understand them or their point of view. 'At the New Salem Bible Thumping Good News
Evangelical High Hope Church -- it had one of those names,' Vice President Al Gore's
Harvard mentor and friend Martin Peretz said, laughing, 'there was a little bit of
anxiety' about whether she would be allowed to preach. Mr. Gore, though, had spent all
his life straddling the two worlds -- of Tennessee and Washington, high church and
low, gut-level religion and Ivy League intellectualism. So when they collided, perhaps
inevitably, on that of all days, two years ago in December, he knew how to bridge the
gap. He suggested that the Tennessee preacher ask himself, 'What would Jesus do?' And
in the end, Bishop Jane Holmes Dixon did speak at the service. Those close to the
famously scientific-minded vice president, a man who by his own estimation is
sometimes a little too rational, say he had not just picked up the right words to use
on that occasion, but is himself a believing Southern Baptist whose faith drives him.
Yet his Baptist roots are only one part of an intricate and eclectic spiritual life,
one that from the start mirrored his larger experience of growing up in two places.
For two weeks every summer as a youngster, he was a regular at the revival meetings at
New Salem, near his family's farm outside Carthage, Tenn. 'We'd be in the middle of
getting the tobacco crop in, and I'd carry Al with us,' his closest childhood friend,
Steve Armistead, said. Then, come winter, he would be back at St. Albans prep school
in Washington, attending daily chapel services -- Episcopalian services -- at the
National Cathedral, where even whispering was not allowed... 'I had a real smorgasbord
of religious experiences,' Mr. Gore said in a recent interview about his faith. 'On
Sundays in Washington I'd go to the Presbyterian Church around the corner from the
Fairfax,' the hotel where his family lived during the school year, 'and in Carthage
we'd alternate between my mother's Church of Christ and my father's Baptist church.
Except when we went to the Methodist church.' Mr. Gore has continued to branch out
over the years, too, studying mysticism as well as ethics, his primary focus during
three semesters at Vanderbilt Divinity School, and at least toying with New Age
ideas...
"His oldest daughter, Karenna Gore Schiff, said his spiritual search reminded her of
the year he spent trying to decide whether to enlist in the Army. 'I remember hearing
about the way he was thinking about going to Vietnam, and there's a similar strain in
how he's open to religious faith,' she said. 'There's a discomfort with being so sure
about something. I see him searching, seeking and striving and don't see his faith as
static.'"